The challenge: Quality content at reduced costs

"There are two things guaranteed in regional newspapers in 2012. Editorial costs will decline further and readers will be increasingly bombarded by content from all directions. If regional papers offer dull filler material, they will continue to alienate readers and the downward spiral will go on. Ultimately, if nothing changes, everything stays the same. And for regional newspapers, that will mean their demise edges ever closer."

This is the thrust of my latest article for InPublishing magazine. Should you be minded, you can read the whole thing here. 

Regional newspapers: 10 things to expect

Here is my article for the latest edition of InPublishing magazine - the ten things that ought to happen in the regional newspaper industry this year. At a glance they are: 

1. Stop the war

Before we rebuild newspapers we have to rebuild the internal relationships between management and staff.

2. Change (the) management

We have lost subs and editors but what about those who are meant to be guiding us through? The industry needs fresh blood and thinking, right up to the very top.

3. Chase the money

We need a radical approach to sales and innovative, skilled people to implement it.

4. Sort out the content

Readers need a genuine reason to buy the paper or visit the website every day. It means original, quality, targeted and real time content. Without it there is no business.

5. Stop doing things that aren't core

Expect cuts in distribution, printing, accounts. It's all about content and sales now - everything else can be sold, outsourced or closed down.

6. Go weekly

A weekly analysis of events, complementing a comprehensive, hyperlocal digital news service, would be more relevant than a daily print offering out-of-date news. There are nearly 30 evening papers selling less than 20,000. Expect there to be fewer at the end of the year.

7. Stop talking paywalls

Regional newspapers need to maintain and grow our audience and they won't do that by excluding swathes of the community.

8. Stop paying lip-service to local 

Newspapers have to genuinely get things done, organise events, become community leaders, be central to the economic fabric and get their reporters out.

9. Stay at home

2011 should be the year when the industry wakes up to the real advantages of home-working and outsourcing.   

10. Think about running a dry-cleaners 

Regional newspapers' best chance will be owners who genuinely care about the titles, work hard to ensure they succeed and know the community they serve. A local business with realistic margins … like a dry cleaners.

I also asked the great and the good of the industry what regional newspapers should be doing in 2011 - and have included their thoughts.   

Regional Press 2011 outlook. Your thoughts?

This time last year I was asked by the editor of InPublishing magazine to write an article on the outlook for the regional Press in 2010. You can read it here. In short it focused on getting the content right, finding new revenue streams and companies coming to terms with smaller profits. It concluded: Unable to sell and with revenues declining, newspaper companies have little option but continue to draw as much profit as they can. Manage the decline carefully, keep it tight, don’t invest and there could be a good few fertile years in the cash cow yet. So, unfortunately, what regional newspapers must really do in 2010 is brace themselves for more of the same.  
I also asked the industry's makers and shakers for their tips for 2010 and they are listed alongside the article. Now I have been asked to write an article on, you guessed it, the outlook for 2011. The easy option is to say, even more of the same. But if you have any thoughts on where the regional Press goes from here, please let me have them. You can either leave a comment below or email me at petersands@mistral.co.uk. All contributions welcome.

Subbing hubs turning full circle?

Traditional subs? Hubs? Reporters writing directly to the page? Outsourcing? Working from home? In the last few months I have been working with newspapers who are all taking a different approach to how they produce their titles. At the Daily Mail I have been training subs in the usual way - text editing, accuracy, rewriting, headlines and layout. This week I have been with those at the Press Association who are producing the Daily and Sunday Mirrors and the People. With big-hitting former Mirror subs now on the PA team, it is a project that has settled down and is working smoothly. Indeed I have stolen a headline from sub Kay Harrison on Polly Hudson's column - Daybreak's Christine Bleakley: The secret diary of Adrian's moll - for my headline course. I have also been at the Hull Daily offices, not working on the hub, but training 80 reporters to write headlines. The conclusion, not surprisingly, is that bright reporters can be taught to create good publishable headlines. It is certainly right that editors examine the way their newspapers are produced. If I was editing these days I would definitely put my editorial energy into the content and look at ways to reduce the 'processing'. We all know, of course, that in many cases the motivation is not to shift manpower to the reporting side but to cut costs. There has been much written about this and there will be much more to come. Here is the latest contribution Why the hubs will turn full circle  from my old editor Allan Prosser in this month's InPublishing magazine. As usual Allan doesn't sit on the fence. Here is a couple of extracts: 

In the Gadarene rush to impose manufacturing process on their titles, publishers have destroyed value, thrown away knowledge, and vandalised their assets. In many cases they should be ashamed, not that shame is a common characteristic of the newspaper business. More importantly, very few managers who have overseen this damage would last a week in the real world of competitive industry.

No edition of this magazine would be large enough to accommodate the account of howlers, inaccuracies and plain stupidities which have emerged through the centralisation of production and the so-called focus on efficiency through delayering the checks and balances which existed before the move to what has infamously been called “one touch publishing.  

Strident stuff. Your thoughts, as always, are welcome.

Radical revenue ideas

Hull Daily Mail this week - running a subbing and layout course for members of the hub. Might try to take in Derby v Newcastle on Tuesday. Also putting together a 24-page Champions League supplement for the Irish Examiner and writing an article on 'radical revenue ideas for newspapers' for InPublishing magazine.  The idea was inspired by Will Lewis's team in Euston who are charged with, among other things, using the Telegraph brand to "capitalise on cutting-edge ideas, driving new revenue streams by better serving our customers". This is proving a tough one to write. If anyone has come across really innovative ways for newspapers to make money, I'd love to hear them (but then, I guess, wouldn't everyone).